Food, income and social pay-off
A project that started with building on successful experiences with Integrated Pest Management in rice-fish culture in northwest Bangladesh has developed to provide far more wide-ranging benefits. At first the focus was on teaching small-scale farmers that it was possible to maintain good production of rice without heavy use and cost of fertilizers and pesticides, and that such an IPM approach permitted them to enhance production by including fish in their paddies. This was further developed to introduce the growing of vegetables on the bunds or dykes between the rice fields.
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| Credit: DFID |
In rural Bangladesh it has been a woman's role to cultivate vegetables, but in the seclusion of the homestead garden close to the family home. The new rice-fish-vegetable system has required the women to work, communally and singly, among the paddy land. The consequences have been economically, nutritionally and socially beneficial.
Initiated and implemented by the NGO CARE, and now greatly expanded with funding from the UK Department for International Development (DFID), the Interfish project has proved a model of how Sustainable Livelihoods Approaches (SLAs) can provide broader benefits to individuals and communities than a more narrowly focused single-sector approach. "The project has increasingly looked at the issue of people", says Tim Robertson, previously head of CARE in Bangladesh and now DFID Fisheries Advisor in Dhaka. "It began with a technical focus and evolved to recognize the importance of understanding farmers' approaches to management of rice fields.
While Tim Robertson's comments emphasise that SLAs focus on people and their strengths and the opportunities available to them, rather than only addressing household food security, for example, the manner of the project's management also illustrates another aspect of SLAs in practice: it was initiated by CARE, drawing on its expertise in developing deep tubewell systems, but also called on the experience gained by the Northwest Fisheries Extension Project and on the FAO's regional experience with IPM and Farmers' Field Schools. DFID has also been involved with funding and technical advice. Thus a multi-partner collaboration has resulted in multi-sectoral benefits.
The benefits have been an increase in production per unit area of land, improved nutrition of farming families, a surplus for sale (benefiting the women who have produced and sold the vegetables and fish seed), and raised awareness of how management can improve the ecology. This has led to the formation of male and female groups with the knowledge and skills to engage in debate on pesticide use. The women have gained in confidence, now contribute to family decision making and have gained respect and status in their communities. Thus Interfish has demonstrated how a carefully planned, specific intervention can strengthen a community's livelihood options.
The Government of Bangladesh has also been impressed by the success of Interfish and the Sustainable Livelihoods Approaches concept. Once hostile to rice-fish cultivation and criticised for its rigid, top-down extension methods, the Government has become a partner in the latest phase of the Project and has incorporated the IPM and Farmers' Field School models into its new extension policy.
